Sluggish Nonito Donaire surrenders title to Alexandro Santiago
- Planet Sport writer
- 30 July 2023
We may be seeing the back end of Filipino legend Nonito Donaire after he was very lacklustre in defeat to Alexandro Santiago to lose his WBC bantamweight title.
Nonito Donaire and Alexandro Santiago went toe-to-toe in Mexico for the WBC bantamweight title on Saturday, with the latter making short work of his more experienced foe.
While there is no denying his outstanding career, 40-year-old Donaire just looked too slow in defeat to Santiago and it is difficult to imagine him fighting his way back into contention - or him even wanting to.
Santiago idolized Donaire as a young fighter and was visibly emotional after the bout.
"It's so hard to explain this moment right now," he said via a translator. "All the work we put in for just this moment, it's great to win this title. It's been an honor to fight such a legend like Nonito and he just told me 'thank you, thank you for giving me this great fight.'"
Donaire did not immediately announce his retirement and said he would like to continue but admitted the final decision wasn't his to make.
"I will continue because I love the sport so much," Donaire said. "But the thing I told my wife, and who has the word whether I have it or not and stuff like that. So we just gotta go back to the locker room and talk about it and see where we go from there. I felt good, there were some things that just didn't trigger. I didn't pull the trigger, and that was my biggest problem."
Asked if that was a result of his age, Donaire, protested.
"I say hell no to that."
